This article is part of the international report that was presented at the 12 January meeting of the CPGB-ML central committee.

The International Criminal Court has acquitted a notorious Congo ‘rebel’ leader, Mathieu Ngudjolo, of war crimes, although it is well known that as chief of staff of the marauding ‘Front for National Integration’, an armed militia made up mostly of members of his Lendu tribe.

He was responsible, among other things, for a 2003 attack on a village called Bogoro in the mineral-rich Ituri region of the country, in which about 200 people were hacked to death or burnt alive, while female survivors were raped and held in camps as sex slaves. Incredibly, the basis of the acquittal was “lack of evidence”. Although the prosecution asked for Ngudjolo to remain in custody while they appealed, this request was refused.

It should be noted that Ngudjolo’s vicious militia is one of many that operate in eastern Congo, financed, equipped and armed by various imperialist enterprises, whose function it is to safeguard the extraction of minerals from the area and their transportation out of the country. Recruitment to these militias is often facilitated by the puppet governments of Rwanda and/or Uganda, whose cooperation is in any event needed to ensure the militias receive supplies.

It would seem only natural that an imperialist court should be reluctant to condemn an imperialist henchman unless diplomatic considerations made it impossible not to do so.